‘Coalition of the Willing’ Ready to Deliver Long-Range Missiles to Ukraine — What Could Go Wrong?

Members of the “Coalition of the Willing” have expressed their readiness to supply Ukraine with long-range missiles, the Downing Street said on Thursday.

The meeting took place in Paris earlier on Thursday in a hybrid format, chaired by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron.

“The Prime Minister also welcomed announcements from Coalition of the Willing partners to supply long range missiles to Ukraine to further bolster the country’s supplies,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously stated that Ukrainian forces could only carry out such operations with NATO personnel involved, signaling direct Western participation in the conflict. This could fundamentally change the nature of the confrontation, with NATO members effectively fighting against Russia.

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Senator Tammy Duckworth: Trump Vaporizing That Drug Cartel Vessel Means He’ll Use the Military to Interfere in Elections or Something

This week, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said that the real reason Trump wants to bring National Guard troops into Chicago is so that he can ‘set the stage’ to use the U.S. Military to interfere in future elections like the 2026 midterms.

As insane as that sounds, it has apparently now become a talking point among Democrats.

While appearing on MSNBC, Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth added another crazy dimension to this, suggesting that when Trump took out that cartel vessel this week, that was proof that he is going to use the U.S. Military to interfere in future elections.

If any of this makes sense to you, you might be a Democrat.

Breitbart News has details:

While discussing speaking with federal officials about possible immigration crackdowns in Illinois, Duckworth said, “Overall, the city of North Chicago and the surrounding communities have made it clear to their law enforcement officers that they will not cooperate with DHS and ICE unless there is a federal warrant, not one of these fake ICE warrants, but a federal warrant.

And that they’re not going to participate [in] and support ICE actions in basically harassing and intimidating everyday people on the streets of our cities.”

She added that “this President is setting the conditions so that he can actually unilaterally occupy the streets of our cities and interfere in the next election, do what he wants.”

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Pentagon-Funded Research Supported Chinese Military Projects, House Report Finds

A congressional investigation has revealed the Chinese regime exploited U.S. universities to collaborate on hundreds of defense projects funded by American taxpayers, including some blacklisted by the U.S. government due to ties to the Chinese military.

The report, released on Sept. 5 by House Republicans on the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), builds on a 2024 investigation by Committee Chairman John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and former House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.).

It found that hundreds of millions in U.S. federal research funding over the past decade have aided China’s technological and military advancements.

“American taxpayer dollars should be used to defend the nation—not strengthen its foremost strategic competitor,” the report said.

The report identified over 1,400 research publications linked to Department of Defense (DOD)-funded projects with Chinese partners, valued at more than $2.5 billion in taxpayer funds. Approximately 800—over half—involved direct collaboration with defense entities of the Chinese state.

It urges limiting U.S. research collaboration with China and supports new legislation by Moolenaar to block DOD funding for projects involving Chinese entities flagged as security risks by the U.S. government.

The report highlighted several case studies posing significant national security risks.

One project—funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Army Research Office (ARO), and NASA—involved researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, Arizona State University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Beihang University.

Shanghai Jiao Tong is overseen by China’s State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND), the agency managing the defense industry. Beihang, part of China’s “Seven Sons of National Defence” linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), was added to the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Entity List in 2001 for its involvement in rocket systems and unmanned aerial vehicles, deemed a threat to U.S. national security.

Another project on thin film research, funded by the DOD’s Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, involved Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University of Arkansas, the University of Science and Technology of China, and Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT). HIT, also a “Seven Sons of National Defence” university, operates a SASTIND-overseen lab researching advanced materials and welding for military applications, including spaceflight, aircraft carriers, and nuclear submarines, in collaboration with the state-owned Ansteel Group.

The Select Committee’s report reveals major issues with DOD Research & Engineering (R&E). For example, it failed to update its risk framework or enforcement, listing only a few of China’s known talent programs and defense labs on the 1286 List, despite many more being identified. Additionally, there have been no follow-ups to ensure that grants comply with safety rules, even when risks are flagged.

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Trump’s Contronymal “Peace” with Russia

ith all the hullabaloo about President Donald Trump’s “peace” gestures toward Russia over Ukraine and the resetting of US-Russia bi-lateral relations, it is worth remembering the “pivot to Asia” announced by the Obama administration in 2011 and the coup d’état it carried out in Ukraine in 2014.

For those who might not remember, I would recommend two films: John Pilger’s The Coming War on China and Oliver Stone’s Ukraine on Fire.

They are two prongs of a long-term U.S. strategy to maintain American preeminence throughout the world by countering Russia and China simultaneously, if not equally at once. Such strategy is not determined by someone like President Donald Trump speaking or acting impulsively, as is his wont, but by bankers, financiers, éminences grises, and pale-faced scholarly guns-for-hire in stately buildings reserved for such deliberations.

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, there is a consistent foundational foreign policy strategy from one American presidential administration to the next with necessary little detours here and there, and arguments within the ruling class about tactics.

Long-term strategy is capacious enough to include sudden seeming shifts in policies that are couched in cover stories that beguile even the smartest people. Wishes fuddle the minds of the most astute. They serve to obscure the interests of U.S. dominance of the world, a dominance that is now threatened, and one that Trump is not abandoning, even as he adjusts American tactics on the fly.

The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and its magazine, Foreign Affairs are where the ruling elites of the United States debate and determine American foreign policies from administration to administration, regardless of political party.

The CFR is the preeminent U.S. think tank; it is over one hundred years old, financed by the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie Foundations and its members have included former CIA Director Allen Dulles, McGeorge Bundy, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and many other high government and financial figures, including David Rockefeller, who served as  chairman between 1970-1985.

“Largely unbeknownst to the general public, executives and top journalists of almost all major US media outlets have long been members of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).” It is evidence of why the corporate mainstream media is an adjunct of the U.S. propaganda system. To become a member is to be baptized into the U.S. ruling establishment and its vast propaganda network that includes, as former CIA analyst Ray McGovern describes it: the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex, MICIMATT.

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Israeli intelligence data: Militants account for only 1 in 4 Gaza detainees

Only one in four Palestinians captured by Israeli forces in Gaza were identified by the army as militants, with civilians making up the vast majority of “unlawful combatants” detained in Israeli prisons since October 7, a joint investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian can reveal.  

This is what emerges from figures obtained from a classified database managed by Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate (known by the Hebrew acronym “Aman”), in addition to official Israeli prison statistics disclosed in legal proceedings. Testimonies from former Palestinian detainees and Israeli soldiers who served in detention facilities further indicate that Israel has knowingly abducted civilians en masse and held them for long periods in appalling conditions.

Detention figures cited by the state in May in response to High Court petitions revealed that a total of 6,000 Palestinians had been arrested in Gaza during the first 19 months of the war and held in Israel under a law for incarcerating “unlawful combatants” — a legal tool that allows Israel to imprison people indefinitely, without charge or trial, if there are “reasonable grounds” to believe they participated in “hostile activities against the State of Israel” or that they are a member of a group that has.

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‘Gaza City occupation may not affect Hamas’: Israeli army warns Tel Aviv

The Israeli military has expressed doubt over how effective the planned assault to occupy Gaza City will be in terms of forcing Hamas into submission, according to Israel’s Broadcasting Corporation (KAN). 

KAN reported on 4 September that an army representative addressed a closed-door panel of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee a day earlier. 

“Why would the occupation of Gaza City cause Hamas to budge at all? I did not say it would move Hamas; it is not certain at all. The city has symbolic significance,” he told the committee, according to KAN. 

The panel was also informed by the military representative that around 800,000 Palestinians reside in Gaza City. 

Israel has declared Gaza City a “dangerous combat zone” and has already initiated plans to forcibly displace the nearly one million residents. 

Previous reports have revealed heavy tensions between the government and Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir, who went to great lengths pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the danger the occupation plan poses to the captives held by the resistance in Gaza.

Zamir also told Netanyahu that the operation will put further unnecessary strain on Israeli troops.

The army chief plans to tell the government that “there will be no choice but to impose military rule on all of Gaza from November,” Channel 12 reported on 3 September. Zamir has previously called on the government to accept an exchange and ceasefire deal.

On Wednesday, Hamas said it was willing “to enter into a comprehensive deal in which all enemy prisoners held by the resistance will be freed in exchange for an agreed-upon number of Palestinian prisoners held by the occupation.”

“This agreement will end the war on the Gaza Strip, result in the withdrawal of all occupation forces from the entire Gaza Strip, open the border crossings to allow the entry of all the Gaza Strip’s necessities, and start the process of rebuilding,” it added. “The Hamas movement is still awaiting the response of the Zionist enemy to the proposal.”

Hamas had said in a statement on 18 August that it accepted the latest Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal in the Gaza Strip.

However, Israel rejected the deal and insisted on going ahead with the occupation of Gaza City. 

“This is more spin by Hamas, containing nothing new,” Netanyahu’s office said in reference to Hamas’s statement. 

The premier’s office added that the war can end immediately if five conditions are met – the release of all captives, the disarmament of Hamas, the demilitarization of Gaza, Israeli security control in Gaza, and “the establishment of an alternative civilian administration that does not indoctrinate for terror, does not dispatch terror, and does not threaten Israel.”

A leaked Israeli army document obtained by Hebrew media has concluded that Operation Gideon’s Chariots, launched by the military in Gaza earlier this year, failed to achieve its goals. 

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Trump Reportedly Considering Striking Cartels Inside Venezuela

President Donald Trump is reportedly considering unleashing military strikes directly against drug cartels operating deep inside Venezuela, as part of a no-holds-barred strategy to dismantle Nicolas Maduro’s regime.

The consideration comes amid Trump’s ongoing war on narco-trafficking, which he sees as a direct threat to American security, especially with the flood of drugs pouring across our southern border under failed Biden-Harris policies.

Citing multiple unnamed sources briefed on the plans, CNN reported on Friday evening that Trump has greenlit options for targeted strikes on Venezuelan soil, building on a recent lethal operation that sank an alleged drug-smuggling boat leaving the country.

CNN reports:

The US has moved substantial military firepower into the Caribbean in recent weeks, a move meant in part to be a signal to Maduro, according to multiple White House officials.

Ships armed with Tomahawk missiles, an attack submarine, a range of aircraft and more than 4,000 US sailors and Marines are now all positioned near Venezuela. Two White House officials told CNN 10 advanced F-35 fighter jets are also being sent to Puerto Rico, where a Marine unit is currently conducting amphibious landing training exercises.

The administration has taken steps to connect Maduro to its broader anti-drug mission – labeling him as a narco-terrorist with ties to some of those recently-designated cartels – and doubling the bounty for his arrest to $50 million.

This shift will treat cartel operatives as enemy combatants, not just criminals, allowing for decisive military action.

White House officials emphasized that no final decision has been made regarding strikes inside Venezuela, but the door remains open if it serves U.S. interests.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked on Tuesday if the White House was considering strikes on Venezuelan soil against the Maduro regime, and he did not rule out the possibility.

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Ukraine Gov’t Looks to Ban Branch of Orthodox Church over Ties to Russia

The Ukrainian government has declared that a branch of the Orthodox Church has failed to sever its longstanding ties with Moscow – and could soon be banned.

The looming ban affects one of the two rival branches of Orthodoxy in the country and further underscores the turbulent role of religion as Ukraine fends off the Russian invasion. Orthodoxy is the majority religion in both Russia and Ukraine and has served as a cultural and spiritual battleground in tandem with the wider war.

The action comes a year after the Ukrainian Parliament passed a law banning the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church due to its strong support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The law also authorized banning any organization tied to the Russian church. A government investigation into the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, with its centuries-old ties to Moscow, soon followed.

The UOC denounced the full-blown Russian invasion from the start in 2022. It declared its independence from the Moscow church the same year and reiterated that stance in 2025.

Even so, the government says the UOC has refused to take necessary steps, such as revising its governing documents, to complete that separation.

The Aug. 27 government action, while long in the works, still requires more legal processes to take full effect.

The government has petitioned a court to ban the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church itself. The church, if it loses, would have the right to one appeal to a higher court before the case is finalized – a process that could be completed in months, its lawyer said.

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US generals involved in European plan to send 10,000 troops to Ukraine – WSJ

Top US military officials have been involved in drawing up a plan for “security guarantees” for Kiev advocated by Paris and London that includes a massive troop deployment to Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing a European diplomat.

The scheme drawn up primarily by European army chiefs includes two groups of forces that are to be sent to Ukraine, according to the report. One of them would be tasked with training and assistance to the Ukrainian military, while the second would serve as a “reassurance force” for Kiev. The troops are to be deployed once Moscow and Kiev reach a peace deal.

A total of 26 nations agreed to contribute to “security guarantees” for Ukraine in various ways, French President Emmanuel Macron said earlier this week, following a meeting of the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ – a group of Kiev’s European backers.

The current commitments would allow for a deployment of over 10,000 troops to Ukraine, the WSJ source said, adding that the plan “received input from some US generals,” including the US head of the NATO Allied Command Operations.

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Trump Bluntly Explains The US Bombed Iran For Israel

President Trump said in an interview published on Tuesday that no one has done more for the state of Israel than himself and cited his recent airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities as an example.

“So, Israel is amazing, because, you know, I have good support from Israel,” the president told the Daily Caller. “Look, nobody has done more for Israel than I have, including the recent attacks with Iran, wiping that thing out. We, that plane, wiped them out like nobody ever saw before.”

Trump made the comments when asked if he was worried about the growing skepticism among young Republicans when it comes to the US relationship with Israel, and he noted the Israel lobby’s control over Congress, saying it has waned in recent years.

“But when, if you go back 20 years. I mean, I will tell you, Israel had the strongest lobby in Congress of anything or body, or of any company or corporation or state that I’ve ever seen. Israel was the strongest. Today, it doesn’t have that strong a lobby. It’s amazing,” Trump said.

“There was a time where you couldn’t speak bad, if you wanted to be a politician, you couldn’t speak badly. But today, you have, you know, AOC plus three, and you have all these lunatics, and they’ve really, they’ve changed it,” he added.

The criticism of Israel among a small number of members of Congress is no longer limited to Democrats, as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who is considered a strong supporter of President Trump, has recently come out strongly against Israel’s campaign in Gaza and became the first Republican in Congress to label it a genocideRep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is also known for his opposition to US aid to Israel and the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC.

“Israel, you would understand this very much, Israel was the strongest lobby I’ve ever seen. They had total control over Congress, and now they don’t, you know, I’m a little surprised to see that,” Trump said.

The president, who is strongly backing Israel’s assault in Gaza, said the military campaign is not good for Israel’s public image. “They may be winning the war, but they’re not winning the world of public relations, you know, and it is hurting them. But Israel was the strongest lobby 15 years ago that there has ever been, and now it’s, it’s been hurt, especially in Congress,” he said.

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